Patient experience is key, says GP leader

The leader of the UK's GPs will today (Thursday 11 June 2009) urge family
doctors to focus on their front of house services.

Launching a new BMA publication, ?Developing
general practice: Listening to Patients', at the start of
this year's Conference of Local Medical Committees*, Dr Laurence Buckman,
the Chairman of the BMA's GPs Committee, will praise the high quality
of care provided by GPs but will say the patient experience is also important:

?This is the year of quality, when we show our patients and the
public what we can do and how well we can do it. I want to ensure we are consistently
responsive to our patients and to praise the GPs who just get on with it ?
who deliver care in difficult areas, with hard-to-reach patients, with the
unemployed or the poor.?

He will urge GPs to consider how they can improve the quality of their patients'
experience:

?It should be normal for all of us to think ?how does this
look to my patients?' We can always improve aspects of the practice
and in doing so make the surgery more inviting.?

?Developing general practice: listening to patients'
was put out to consultation in March 2009 and asked GPs and patient groups to
share their experiences of developing and improving their non clinical services.

This final publication contains innovative examples of how GPs have developed
services for their patients. For example, a surgery that has interactive computer
pods in its waiting room so patients can record feedback on a touch-screen computer
giving staff live comments on the care and services being offered. Others offer
web-based prescription ordering services which can be linked to a pharmacy of
the patient's choice for easy dispensing. There are also IT systems which
allow GPs to see online all correspondence relating to a patient, their test
results and if in-patients, which ward they have been admitted to, making overseeing
their patients' care easier and quicker.

The guidance offers advice on how GPs can best manage opening times and their
often complex appointment systems and suggests the development of practice charters.
It also encourages GP practices to set up Patient Participation Groups (PPGs).
At the moment only around a third of surgeries have PPGs. The GPC believes PPGs
are the best way to gather local patient input into the services run by a practice.

In his speech to conference Dr Buckman will say that the £8 million currently
used on the national patient survey could be better used to develop these groups
as this is ?a good way to get genuine patient involvement.”
He will say it is time to move away from the current ?sham”way
of measuring patient satisfaction with access:

?Real access is what patients need - not just hitting rigid political
targets. We must persuade the NHS to stop playing along with this deception
that patients are getting what they want. They want high quality service with
good access, not a sham to get a government re-elected on promises nobody
believes anymore.?

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